Changing Life Styles - Changing Competencies: Turkish Migrant Youth in Europe

"Veranderte Lebensstile - Veranderte Kompetenzen: Turkische Migrationsjugendliche in Europa". This paper examines the plight of Turkish migrant youth in Europe particularly as migration involves social change in terms of changing life styles which require changing competencies. For the migrant youth to be assets, rather than problems, for the receiving society, their full integration into society should be ensured. This requires the enhancement of their cognitive competence and psycho-social development involving the autonomous-related self. Drawing parallels between rural to urban migration and international migration with regard to the experienced social change, the Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP) is taken up as a case in point. TEEP showed that early childhood enrichment through supporting the mothers among rural to urban migrants in Istanbul, Turkey was beneficial for both the cognitive competence and the psycho-social development of their children. The gains were found to be sustained into young adulthood. Similar programs of intervention and support would be highly beneficial for ethnic migrants in Europe, particularly for Turkish-German youth, given the fact that they tend to do poorly in school. Immigrants' positive youth development, involving the enhancement of autonomous-related self, cognitive competence, psychological and socio-cultural adaptation, promises to provide far reaching benefits to the receiving societies, as well.